Ham radio for people with disabilities. A weekly podcast from the Courage Handiham System, http://handiham.org.
Ham radio topics, including accessible equipment, blind ham radio, events, policy in the Amateur Radio Service, more.

Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Welcome to Handiham World!

End-of-year greetings from all of us at Handihams! At this time of the year, it is traditional to over all the old stories from the previous year. Guess what? I''m not going to do that, thus sparing you from the tedium of one more retrospective. Consider it my New Year''s gift to all of our readers and listeners. It isn''t that important stuff hasn''t happened over the previous year, it''s just that too many media outlets and editors cobble together old stories so that they don''t have to do any work on current news at the end of the year. Me? I would rather just make this a short and to the point issue as we look forward to 2009. You''re welcome.

There are several new handiham-related things to look forward to early on in the new year.

The first item of business is related to our Handiham Nets:

Beginning January 1, Howard, KE7KNN, our Net Manager, will begin taking counts of the stations checked in for each net session. This information can be sent as official National Traffic System traffic, if the net control station so desires. This is the way it is done on the PICONET, which I will get to in a minute. The idea of counting stations checking in and coming up with the total to pass on to the Net Manager will help us to get an idea of how healthy the net really is and whether it is growing or shrinking. Furthermore, sending the total as official traffic will help gain all of us more experience with NTS. For example, let''s say I am the net control station and I tally 20 stations that checked in during my session of the net. At the end of the net, I would prepare a piece of traffic for Howard that would go something like this:

This is message number one routine from WA0TDA, current time and date, to KE7KNN. Station total 20. Signature Pat

I know this isn''t the exact formal style of the ARRL radiogram form, but it should be good enough to get things done. Howard will probably be listening to the net and will take the traffic directly, or you can use the radiogram format to include his e-mail address for delivery, which is ke7knn@arrl.net. Most stations handling traffic will keep some kind of log so that they don''t lose count of which message number they should be using.

As long as we are talking about the nets, I want to share with you a message from our Net Manager:

Hi Pat,

Your e-letter has me listed as the net manager, but you have Arlene''s call sign! Remember, she''s the pretty one! My call sign is KE7KNN. I have noticed on the net that we are getting a lot of interference from one station using JAWS. Anyone using automated speech such as JAWS needs to turn it down when they are on the net. Also, we need people to be careful not to overdrive their microphones. I''ll be out there listening each day. You can email me at KE7KNN@arrl.net. That is for everyone for the nets.

Thanks, Howard

Pat says: My apologies to Howard for getting his callsign wrong in the previous edition. Darn it, I was hoping to make it through the entire year of 2008 without a single mistake. One of the things I am going to do over the coming months, and you can call this a New Year''s resolution if you like, is to tune around the bands and try to really get to know what is going on on the frequencies that I seldom visit. It has been my habit to consistently return to the same old frequencies, usually at the same time of day. Who knows what I might be missing? Furthermore, I just may get some ideas about when and where to build new handiham nets. Keep in mind that we are open to suggestions as to which high frequency nets we want to keep during 2009. The best way to form a solid opinion is to try really hard to listen at different times and on different frequencies to learn exactly what is going on. Keep an open mind about this, and send your suggestions to either Howard or me.

The next item of business is the remote base:

We are still on track to bring the remote base online for member use in early 2009. Stan is still working on the software, but we expect to begin an orderly assignment of passwords to members in the first quarter of 2009. There is still quite a lot to do on the instruction pages, and frankly I am a bit worried about getting inundated with tech support requests. I do need to make the instruction pages more detailed so that our users will be able to figure out as much as possible on their own. One of the things you will be able to do with the remote base is to check in to the PICONET, a very active daily HF net with a long time association with the Handihams.

The PICONET has a history paralleling the handiham system, having started in the late 1960s and continuing to this day as a successful net. It is worth looking at because it has had staying power in the face of a great deal of technological and social change in amateur radio. The tenor of the net is one of camaraderie and informality with a modest helping of public service and a friendly net control station. Net control station duties are shared among a list of volunteers who take "their hour" on a particular day of the week. The system has evolved over the decades as a practical method to avoid any one person being tasked with too many hours and too much control. Everyone understands that each net control station has a different personality. A count of stations checking in is maintained and passed as a piece of traffic at the end of each hour. Because the net is on 3.925 MHz, a frequency band covered by most out-of-the-box commercial wire antennas and verticals, there are few technical problems for participants setting up a station. An annual get-together reinforces the social aspect of the net. There is a website. A "blank hour" is rare.

At last September''s PICONET get-together I met friends I''ve known for years, but there were also some teenagers just getting started in amateur radio. The "marketing department" even scored newspaper coverage with photos. To all intents and purposes, the PICONET is alive and well and serves as a good example of an entity that maintains the correct mix to stay that way. It will be fun for Handiham members far and wide to be able to check in via the remote base.

Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Welcome to Handiham World!

Holiday office hours

The Handiham offices will be closed on Wednesday, December 24 and through the Christmas holiday weekend, reopening Monday morning, December 29.

The Handiham Remote Base station will remain active for beta testers throughout the entire holiday season, day and night. It has survived a recent 30 degree below zero morning at Courage North! Be sure to connect to W0EQO-L via your computer EchoLink application to listen to the remote base receiver.

Our full-service website at handiham.org will remain in operation and will be updated as necessary throughout the entire weekend. However, technical support for lost passwords and login problems will probably not be available until next week.

Online education lectures will be available, but will not be updated this week, as I will be busy playing with all the new toys Santa hopefully will bring me for being such a good boy all year long. On the other hand, if Santa brings me a lump of coal for being bad, at least I can burn it to keep warm!

Before we get started with the e-letter, I want to wish all of our readers and podcast listeners the best for a wonderful holiday season from all of us at Courage Center and the Handiham System.

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Welcome to Handiham World!

WA0TDA: Internet security becomes a ham radio topic

Yes, I know. Computers are taking over the world, including ham radio, right?

15 years ago, there were still plenty of hams mightily resistant to the idea of a computer in the ham shack. Each year, I saw more and more computer equipment showing up at hamfests. There were complaints that the hamfests were nothing but computers anymore!

Today there are few holdouts who still don't have computers, especially ham shack computers. Heck, many of us have multiple ham shack computers, often running different operating systems. They control our radios, do our logging, and act as digital mode input and output devices. They make EchoLink and IRLP possible. They can give a digital transfusion to a cranky HT that's lost its memories. In short, they have become essential for most of us, and even the most reluctant computer user will have to admit that an Internet computer in the shack is essential for callsign lookup!

So, like any other piece of ham gear, the shack computer sometimes has its problems. It's really the only piece of gear in the shack that can be damaged by malicious intrusions via the Internet, and because so many ham radio operators are exposed to this danger, radio clubs are beginning to take notice and offer their members some help. Why, just today Microsoft is set to release a vital security update for the Internet Explorer browser. Without the update, an unsuspecting user could risk having their computer hijacked just by visiting a website. Worse yet, the owner of the website may not know that their site is infected. Then there is email spam. This morning I received multiple messages from "Hallmark Cards" containing zip file attachments. Of course as a savvy user I know that Hallmark did not send these messages, and the attached files were harmful viruses designed to take over my computer and steal personal data.

How can your ham club help its members to avoid becoming victims? Here are my suggestions:

Form a computer or Internet Technology committee. Members of the committee can be "go-to" people if anyone in the club has a question.

Consider having a club presentation on Internet Security. If a club member cannot present, try getting an expert from outside the club.

If your club owns an email distribution list, be sure that it is protected from spammers. Open lists are a disaster waiting to happen!

Extend your club's Elmering program to computers, at least the ones that will be used in the ham shack. Members who are new to computing may not know the basics of setting up their computers with firewalls and antivirus software.

Stay informed! Nothing changes as fast as the world of computing technology, so posting relevant stories on your club's website may be in order.

Now, have I got you worried about today's Internet Explorer security patch? Read about it on the BBC website, in a story entitled "Microsoft plans quick fix for IE". Microsoft is due to issue a patch to fix a security flaw believed to have affected as many as 10,000 websites.

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Welcome to Handiham World!

WA0TDA: A short news day

Darned if I didn't have to spend most of today in meetings. Well, guess what? You can't get the weekly e-letter and podcast done while you are sitting in a meeting. If you try to record even the teensiest bit of podcast audio about some ham radio topic, your fellow meeting-goers tend to look at you like you're an odd duck.

So this is a very short edition this week. I plan to be back on track with a regular edition next Wednesday.

Last week we invited you you to use EchoLink to log on to the remote base in receive only mode. I'm going to give you directions again, in case you missed last week's edition, and because I left something important out: You have to log in from a computer as a regular callsign user. Some of our readers and listeners were flummoxed last week, because they were trying to log on via a node using RF, or from a -L or -R callsign. Only regular users are allowed, up to five at a time. Look for the station callsign, W0EQO-L, node number 261171. Connect to the remote base, and you will turn the radio on automatically, and the audio stream will begin. If you happen to do this while the radio is in use, you may hear stations on frequency immediately. If the radio is in use through the W4MQ software, there may be periods while the control operator is transmitting where you do not hear anything, but upon receive you will hear the other signals. If there is no control operator logged in via the W4MQ interface, you can use the EchoLink text feature to control the radio's frequency. Simply enter a number like 5 into the text box and press enter. The radio will respond by changing the VFO to 5 MHz, and you will hear WWV if conditions are favorable. If you want to listen to PICONET on 3.925 MHz, enter 3925 and press enter. The system does not require you to enter the decimal point. If the radio is in the wrong mode, simply sending a U will change the mode to USB, L to LSB, C to CW, A to AM, and so on. When you log on via EchoLink, there is a possibility that there will be other users logged on already, and they may be listening to a frequency they chose. Be respectful of others and don't change the frequency unless you think the other station might be finished. On the other hand, don't hog the station when someone else wants to use it. Up to five users can listen at once. Oh, and one more thing: Since our TS-480 is equipped with blind-friendly speech frequency output, you will hear the radio tell you what frequency it is on as soon as you make a change. Please give the Handiham Remote Base a try and let me know what happens, and I will share your comments with our engineering team, and possibly even with our e-letter readers and podcast listeners! For your Handiham World, I'm...

Wednesday, December 03, 2008

Welcome to Handiham World!

WA0TDA: Remote Base Update

As we have been reporting, the Handiham Remote Base HF station is on track to go live to member use in early 2009. Stan, W4MQ, is working on some software updates to make the process of setting up and operating the rig control software easier for our blind Handiham members. Our thanks to him and to our beta testers, and especially to Lyle, K0LR, project engineer, and Joe, N3AIN, our expert JAWS volunteer and TS-480 user, for working with Stan to identify issues with the accessibility of the system.

One concern that Lyle and I have had is what would happen to the TS-480, the system computer, and the related interface electronics when the temperature dropped in the "shack", which is unheated. Temperatures have not fallen below about 10 degrees Fahrenheit (-12 Celsius) outdoors yet, but we have had no problems thus far. The station is located in the attic of the Courage North dining hall, and the entire building is unheated. In northern Minnesota, which is near the center of the North American continent, dense, cold Arctic air often settles in for long periods of time. It is not unheard of for this part of North America to reach morning low temperatures far below zero. International Falls, Minnesota is used as a testing spot for cold weather operation of new cars. This cold spot was satirized in the Rocky & Bullwinkle cartoons as "Frostbite Falls". How true to life that is!

At any rate, we will no doubt experience our coldest temperature at the remote base site sometime in January, about two weeks following the Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year, which is December 21. That is the day of the least sunshine, but there is a two week lag as the atmosphere catches up, which I guess would be because of thermal inertia. Thus, the really telling cold weather should arrive around mid-January and likely linger for several weeks. It is during this period that the station will be most severely tested as we reach the bottom of the operating temperature envelope.

Now, here is another development: We would like to invite you to use EchoLink to log on to the remote base in receive only mode. Look for the station callsign, W0EQO-L, node number 261171. Connect to the remote base, and you will turn the radio on automatically, and the audio stream will begin. If you happen to do this while the radio is in use, you may hear stations on frequency immediately. If the radio is in use through the W4MQ software, there may be periods while the control operator is transmitting where you do not hear anything, but upon receive you will hear the other signals. If there is no control operator logged in via the W4MQ interface, you can use the EchoLink text feature to control the radio's frequency. Simply enter a number like 5 into the text box and press enter. The radio will respond by changing the VFO to 5 MHz, and you will hear WWV if conditions are favorable. If you want to listen to PICONET on 3.925 MHz, enter 3925 and press enter. The system does not require you to enter the decimal point. If the radio is in the wrong mode, simply sending a U will change the mode to USB, L to LSB, C to CW, A to AM, and so on. When you log on via EchoLink, there is a possibility that there will be other users logged on already, and they may be listening to a frequency they chose. Be respectful of others and don't change the frequency unless you think the other station might be finished. On the other hand, don't hog the station when someone else wants to use it. Up to five users can listen at once. Oh, and one more thing: Since our TS-480 is equipped with blind-friendly speech frequency output, you will hear the radio tell you what frequency it is on as soon as you make a change. Please give the Handiham Remote Base a try and let me know what happens, and I will share your comments with our engineering team, and possibly even with our e-letter readers and podcast listeners!